Muscle Car of the Year

Written
by
Johnny Hunkins
on January 9, 2013 Contributors: Les Bidrawn, Robert McGaffin, Christopher CampbellWe test 10 of the fastest, most agile, and best-looking muscle cars of 2012 —plus one surprising truck.

Once upon a Camaro, the Pro Touring movement was made up of just a handful of cars that stood out from the street machine crowd. Their purposeful tires, large brakes, and apex-defying suspensions quickly elevated them to holy status as their owners/builders piloted them to insane speeds on closed public roads. The rest of the world watched with awe and envy. Suddenly, that Dobbertin-inspired Pro Streeter in the garage—pie cutters up front and a polished blower through the hood—seemed trite and tired.

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In the ensuing two decades, the world caught up to the pioneers of Pro Touring, and the g-Machine style became de rigueur at the most prestigious car shows and cruises. Wheels grew. Billet proliferated. Functionality died. Owners who once had a need for speed now desired trophies. Enigmatically, the street rodification of muscle cars is at the same time accredited with and blamed for the success or failure of Pro Touring, depending on who you ask. But no matter what side of the Pro Touring argument you’re on—the big question has always been: How fast are they?

We aimed to answer just that when we created our Muscle Car of the Year (MCOTY) competition. Are the Pro Touring cars that are typically held up to the public as the best of the breed truly the best, or is it a charade? No sooner than you ask these questions and two more questions pop up. What cars do you test, and how do you test them?

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Choosing the Cars

In order to keep things fresh, we wanted to put the emphasis on new cars that had hit the scene in the last year. We had time and space enough to test just 10 cars, so picking the right ones would be tricky. Earlier this year, we put out the word that we were looking for the best new Pro Touring muscle cars, but got a cool response from readers. Apparently, it’s our magazine, so we gotta do the footwork. We then put out feelers to the top shops, manufacturers, and home-based privateer builders to see what was in the pipeline. Some of the teams you know—like The Roadster Shop and Detroit Speed (DSE)—while others are little guys like Jon Clark and Bob Bertelsen. Some cars are high-end show winners with five-figure paintjobs, and some are weekend warriors, like Kenny Edwards’ Mustang. Some shops that you’d expect to be represented aren’t, not because they didn’t want to be but because they didn’t have an appropriate car that was new enough for our competition. At least now we’re on the radar screen with those shops, and their future MCOTY contenders will be in line for an invite when they are ready.

The process of sniffing out cars for MCOTY was a revealing one. More times than we expected, we’d call a shop only to discover that the car owner was wary of inflicting damage on an expensive ride. Even more telling, in cases where the shop building the car even promised to repair any tweaks, the answer from the client was still “no dice.” Those guys and their cars shall remain anonymous—but those who braved our inaugural MCOTY event will not. Let it be known that our 10 MCOTY participants (and The Roadster Shop with their exhibition C10 truck) have absolutely no qualms about pounding their machines. Win or lose, these cars are all the real deal, and we would love any of them to be in our driveway or paddock.

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To make things a bit easier for our possible competitors to say yes to the invite, we scheduled the MCOTY for the Monday following the Goodguys Street Machine of the Year competition in Columbus. We knew all of 2012’s new Pro Touring machines would need to get their dance card punched at the autocross in Columbus, so we made it extra easy with our selection of venue and date—rent National Trail Raceway just 30 miles east of Columbus for the following day. As it happened, this was a serendipitous litmus test—Goodguys Street Machine of the Year finalists would get the chance to accept or decline our invitation to test their machinery in a far more grueling set of tests than the 35-second Goodguys autocross. Would they compete, or go home? To that point, only one took up the challenge—the “Producer” ’66 Mustang built by the Ringbrothers, which also won Goodguys’ Street Machine of the Year.

The Competition

Figuring out how fast a car is can mean a lot of things. Is it top speed? Is it a drag race? Is it doing donuts on a skidpad? Is it 0-to-100-to-0? Is it a low lap time on a road course? You can make a valid argument for any of these measures, but at the end of the day we had to choose just three tests in order to fit the competition into our venue, and into the time allotted. Additionally, we were limited by what kind of testing we could do at National Trail Raceway—clearly something along the lines of a standing-mile top-speed test or a road course circuit would be out of the question.

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One benchmark test that we had no argument from anybody about was the quarter-mile drag race. Let’s face it, you can add a lot of junk to a car, you can customize it to death, you can do wheels, tires, paint, suspension, and chassis mods, but what makes it a hot rod is its powertrain. The engine is the mojo of any muscle car, and the way you test ’em is by dragging them out. We could probably have used a chassis dyno for a yardstick, but what kind of fun is that? It really defeats the purpose of having a fast car—and the bragging rights that go with it.

The stopping test wasn’t so clear-cut obvious. Pro Touring cars are hot rods that combine raw speed with stopping capability—the question is, what’s the best way to measure that? The stopping test we used—called the speed/stop challenge—starts cars from a dead stop at the dragstrip starting line using the standard Christmas Tree. Cars are timed over an eighth-mile distance like an eighth-mile drag race, but there’s a twist. You have to stop perfectly inside a 50-foot cone box just after the eighth-mile mark. The speed/stop challenge tests not only the acceleration and braking power of a car, it also tests skills like launching, threshold braking, speed shifting, car control, chassis tuning, and depth perception. There are a whole lot of faults that can bubble to the surface in the speed/stop challenge, some of them mechanical, others are driver related.

More than any other aspect, it is the handling ability that defines the Pro Touring car. Where it’s merely acceptable to be bitchin looking and have a big motor in other corners of the hot rod hobby, the g-Machine must grip like a race car. And while we would’ve loved to test our competitors on a full-blown road course, we had the next best thing—a high-speed autocross with lap times approaching a minute in length. As it turned out, the Ohio Valley Region of the SCCA has a regular course laid out inside National Trail’s vast pit area, and they graciously agreed to set up their cones and timing equipment for our test. The coolest part is that National Trail Raceway has an agreement with the SCCA to keep the circuit marked permanently, which means that with the Ohio Valley SCCA Region’s help, we’ll be able to compare this year’s MCOTY performances with those in future years.

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Scoring

Each MCOTY competitor was given 10 chances to run each of the three tests—drag race, speed/stop, and autocross. The PHR staff duly recorded each car’s run in every class, and every competitor had to finish at least three clean laps in each test event, with the maximum number of tries capped at 10. To tabulate the results, we simply took the three best times in each “event,” averaged them, and added all three averages together. With the drag race portion, it was pretty straightforward—anything that would get you disqualified in a regular drag race (red lighting, crossing the centerline, and so on) would get that run tossed. In the speed/stop challenge, the rules were the same, except with the added requirement that cars stop completely inside the stop box. Sliding out the back of the box, knocking over a cone, or any part of the car coming to rest outside the stop box would result in a DQ run. At the autocross, the standard penalty of 1 second per knocked-over cone was in force.

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Each team was allowed one set of tires for the entire event, and the treadwear rating for the tires was limited to a minimum of 200 (i.e. no changing to slicks during the drag race). Each team was allowed the driver of their choice, and teams were not allowed to change drivers between events. Also, drivers were not allowed to pilot multiple cars, as has been the case in other competitions. Simply put: Drivers and their cars were married monogamously throughout the length of the MCOTY competition.

And while there was no “judged” portion of the MCOTY for aspects like true streetability, overall engineering, originality, build/bodywork/paint quality, or suitableness for a given job, we did establish minimum requirements for roadworthiness. All cars were required to have a reasonably complete interior, finished bodywork in good condition with a completed paintjob, street equipment (headlights, turn signals), tags, and a valid registration. Cars also had to pass both an NHRA and SCCA safety inspection. Beyond that, it was our goal to have a variety of makes and build styles represented.

Drum Roll Please …

When the dust settled, some of the results were pretty predictable, while some really threw us a curveball. The fact that Detroit Speed won with their incredibly well-sorted ’66 Mustang didn’t take many by surprise—they’ve been testing their white blur of a fastback for the last year and a half with almost reckless abandon. The simple fact is, once the Ford world figures out how good the DSE Mustang parts really are and how noninvasive they are to install, it will reset the bar in the Blue Oval world. Mustang men—you are in for a wonderful treat!

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Then there’s the Johnson’s Hot Rod Shop (JHRS) ’66 Chevy II Nova SS. For such a shining jewel of a car to roll right out of the JHRS shop and onto our tarmac without so much as having turned a tire in anger, and for it to finish Fourth overall without a hiccup is absolutely amazing. It is the one car in the MCOTY competition we would most want to drive on a daily basis. Alan Johnson has once again proven why he is one of the top car builders in the land; he not only makes them knockout gorgeous, but they are also equally capable performers.

We dare any home-based hot rodder to claim he’s made a larger commitment, put in more build hours, or sacrificed more than Bob Bertelsen in his quest to build his ’71 Camaro. It is truly the equal of most pro-built Pro Touring cars, yet as an owner, Bob is decidedly different than his more well-heeled peers in that building every part of his car has imbued him with the confidence to push his machine to its limit without fear of damaging it. There’s simply nothing on the car he could break that he couldn’t fix, and if he did, it would only be an opportunity to make it better. You can buy a car like Bob’s, but you’ll never be Bob, no matter how fat your bankroll.

YearOne’s ’73 Trans Am McQ twins have probably put to rest once and for all the argument over which is faster in a straight line: turbos or blowers. Both cars are for all practical purposes identical, but the twin turbo was so much faster through the dragstrip speed traps that there was no contest. Controlling all that boost on the autocross, however, is another matter. While the turbo car was technically quicker around the autocross, it was far trickier to drive than the blown car with its more linear power delivery. For the drags, give us the turbo. For the autocross, the blower will be faster in the hands of most drivers.

The biggest heartbreak of the day was arguably Jon Clark’s Plymouth Valiant. The flyweight Mopar showed serious potential early on with amazing performances on the dragstrip and in the braking test, but on literally the last lap of the day, the diminutive A-Body just could not complete the autocross, even after turning two very respectable laps in the 54-second range. In the end, we learned much about what it takes to build a well-rounded Mopar performer, and we plan to crib a few tricks from the Flat Bastard if we get management’s go-ahead to move on our own ’68 Valiant project car.

What can we possibly say about the Roadster Shop ’70 C10 truck other than watch out muscle car guys, sometimes an old truck can clean your clock! Classic trucks like the ’67-72 Chevy C10 are not only way cheaper to buy than Camaros and Chevelles of the same year and condition, they’re relatively light compared to today’s trucks. Pull the old clunky chassis out, bolt in a Roadster Shop Fast Track chassis with an LS/T56 powertrain, and go hunting for six-figure exotics on the autocross, road course, or autobahn. We’ve made bones about how DSE spent the last year-and-a-half tweaking their Mustang stuff—well, the Roadster Shop is no less fanatical and has spent at least as long fine-tuning their Fast Track chassis for the C10, with the result being much the same. You’ll be hard pressed to find a quicker setup for a muscle truck than the Roadster Shop Fast Track chassis. If it had been a muscle car and not a truck, the Roadster Shop’s C10 would’ve been our winner with a best overall score of 72.987. Alas, it is a truck, and could only run MCOTY as an exhibition vehicle. Embarrassment spared.

With the 2012 MCOTY in the books, we look forward to 2013 and the fresh and as-yet-unfinished cars it will bring. This year, we saw dominating performances by a few builders, privateers, and suspension manufacturers, but we know there are others out their lurking on the sideline, waiting for the chance to strike. With any luck, we will find them, and shine a very bright light on them for the world to see. In the meantime, you can enjoy the 2012 MCOTY video coverage on our YouTube channel. Look for details on the 2013 MCOTY in the spring!

Final Results: Muscle Car Of The Year

Rank:

Team/car:

Drag:

Speed/Stop:

Autocross:

Final score:

1

DSE ’66 Mustang

12.547

9.244

51.550

73.342

2

Kevin King ’73 Trans Am

11.803

9.267

53.999

75.069

3

Ringbrothers Producer Mustang

12.683

9.839

54.033

76.554

4

JHRS ’66 Nova SS

13.808

9.674

53.371

76.853

5

Bob Bertelsen ’71 Camaro

13.149

9.664

55.771

78.584

6

Mike Cunningham ’73 Trans Am

12.686

9.945

58.210

80.840

7

Jon Clark ’68 Plymouth Valiant

12.663

9.543

DNF

DNF

8

Kevin Miller ’69 Camaro

12.844

DNF

51.645

DNF

9

Kenny Edwards ’66 Mustang

12.462

DNS

DNS

DNF

10

Mike Coughlin ’71 Chevy Vega

DNF

DNS

DNS

DNF

EXH

Roadster Shop ’70 C10 Chevy truck

12.307

9.323

51.357

72.987

DNS = did not start, DNF = did not finish, EXH = exhibition

The very first PHR Muscle Car of the Year (MCOTY) competition would try to answer the question: Who’s got the quickest Pro Touring muscle car in the land? Mike Coughlin’s ’71 Chevy Vega (built by Woody’s Hot Rodz) was an obvious contender, though it posted a DNF due to teething problems.

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The speed/stop event is one of three performance tests at the MCOTY. It’s an eighth-mile drag race with a stop box at the end. It’s a great test of both acceleration and stopping power, but above all else, it’s a test of driver skill. Here, the Detroit Speed ’66 Mustang showed why it was the top car in attendance.

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The autocross circuit at MCOTY is significantly longer, faster, and with more turns than the typical Goodguys autocross. With lap times in the mid 50-second range, it’s closer to a short road course than an autocross. It’s a great test of street handling—perfect for Pro Touring cars like Jon Clark’s ’68 Valiant. The Valiant would just miss completing the MCOTY when gremlins took it out before finishing the final autocross lap.

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The first ever MCOTY was held at National Trail Raceway, about 30 miles east of Columbus, Ohio. The invited competitors arrived early on the morning of Monday, July 9, around 7 a.m.—just in time for a drivers’ meeting given by PHR Editor Johnny Hunkins.

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Think high-end show cars aren’t fast just because they have awesome paint and fabrication to die for? We know there are readers who question the capability of show-winning cars like those produced by Johnson’s Hot Rod Shop, so we invited Alan Johnson to bring Nathan Powell’s ’66 Nova to the fray. It was Fourth fastest overall.

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The Ghostworks shop was a cornucopia of Pro Touring goodness in 2012—it produced not only Kevin King’s turbo’d LS7-powered ’73 TA, but John Cunningham’s Edelbrock-blown LS7-powered ’73 Trans Am. How could we invite one without the other? We were dying to know whether the turbo or the blower would reign.

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Picking cars to invite to MCOTY wasn’t the easiest, since we only had space and time to test 10 cars. Fortunately, there’s always something new and crazy coming out of the YearOne/Ghostworks stable in Braselton, Georgia—like Kevin King’s 780 (rear wheel) horsepower twin-turbo ’73 Trans Am.

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Last year, Kevin Miller came out of nowhere with this immaculately built ’69 Camaro. It’s homebuilt and features a suspension setup of Miller’s own creation. Over the last year, he caught our attention by winning and getting runner-up at a bunch of events. Normally a very reliable and consistent car, Miller’s Camaro failed to finish due to a problematic clutch.

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Of the privateers in our bunch, Bob Bertelsen’s ’71 Camaro was the only car that you could say is a contender to win a major national car show. Yet at the same time it was also designed from the outset to be a regularly raced track performer. Having just been built, this was its first-ever track outing. Trust us, there’s way more left in it than a mid-pack finish.

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We reserved space at MCOTY for last-minute contenders, knowing that we’d be combing the Goodguys event the weekend prior to MCOTY. We found the perfect car and owner/driver in the form of Kenny Edwards and his homebuilt ’66 Mustang. We were impressed with Edwards’ driving skills, and he was a contender until his engine expired.

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The testing at National Trail Raceway went so smoothly for our first MCOTY event (thanks to the Ohio Valley Region of the SCCA!) that we’re thinking about adding more open spots for 2013. We will be announcing the next MCOTY soon, so if you want to apply for one of the open positions, keep an eye on PHR for the story—we’ll lay out all the entry parameters.

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Nobody wanted to compete in the MCOTY more than the guys from the Roadster Shop, so they were absolutely devastated when the client who owned their ’69 Camaro pulled out the day before. Could the Camaro have won? We’ll never know, however, we did invite the boys to bring their ’70 C10 Chevy truck to make exhibition runs and soothe the pain. If it had been a muscle car, it would’ve been our overall winner.

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Meet the Competitors!

Detroit Speed’s First Ford

’66 Ford Mustang Fastback

There are an awful lot of firsts associated with this particular ’66 fastback. First and foremost, it bested all comers at our first MCOTY competition and took home the title of Muscle Car of the Year. It’s also the first in-house Ford test vehicle for Detroit Speed (DSE), and features their very first Mustang suspension system. Even the suspension itself is a first of its kind, with a cast-aluminum cradle that takes the place of the factory brackets and braces and creates an all-new pickup point for an SLA-style suspension. The world of vintage Mustangs just got a revolution.

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DSE is known for testing their products prodigiously on the street, autocross, and road course before releasing them for sale to the public, and then continuing to test ad infinitum afterward to find any potential weak links after heavy hard use; and also just because DSE’s owners—Kyle and Stacey Tucker—thoroughly enjoy running their cars hard at any opportunity. True to form, this Mustang went through roughly a year and a half of development and testing before being officially unveiled to the public. Luckily, Kyle and Stacey are pretty tight with the car’s owner—the fastback actually belongs to Stacey’s dad, Ron Lyon.

Out at the MCOTY competition, the Mustang was competitive right from the start. Despite some traction issues off the line on the dragstrip, and with the suspension still tuned for autocross handling, Kyle quick shifted it to consistent 12.5s through almost all of his 10 allotted runs, finishing just barely behind Kenny Edwards and his ’66 Mustang, and YearOne with their twin-turbo ’73 Trans Am. After that though, it was the DSE show. Kyle snagged the lowest average e.t. in the speed/stop at 9.244 seconds, and ran the fastest autocross average with 51.550 seconds. There was both a GT3 Porsche and Viper on race tires in attendance, and neither could match the Mustang’s lap times. Actually, Kyle’s best run was an amazing 49-second blur, but a couple of downed cones put that run out of his top three.

Perhaps the most impressive part, however, is that once the event was all wrapped up and the awards had been handed out, Kyle hopped into the Mustang and drove it 400 miles back to Mooresville, North Carolina, without a single issue. To put that in perspective, after driving the Mustang to its limit and exhibiting stellar performance on all fronts and winning our MCOTY competition, as well as runner-up in the Goodguys Columbus autocross the previous day, Kyle stepped it up and proved how perfectly roadworthy the Mustang was. That right there, hot rodders, is the very definition of the type of car that deserves to win the title of Muscle Car of the Year.

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There was both a GT3 Porsche and Viper on race tires in attendance, and neither could match the Mustang’s lap times.

There must be something about dark green muscle cars and detectives: Bullitt, McQ, and even Spenser: For Hire. We don’t know what the common thread was, but all of those cars have strong followings among aficionados. For Kevin King of YearOne, it was John Wayne in a dramatic car chase in a ’73 Super Duty Trans Am that really stuck with him. That sounds cool enough, but this car was a little something different: Brewster Green, de-badged, only a small bird on the nose, Super Duty 455, and a four-speed.

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Kevin is admittedly a huge F-body fan with a minor collection of notable cars brewing, and to him the perfect embodiment of a badass early second-gen TA was McQ’s ’73. Well, at least as far as looks go. Kevin had much bigger plans for the rest of the suspension and drivetrain.

The crew in YearOne’s Ghostworks Garage threw the DSE catalog at the suspension and chassis to make it a balanced handling machine, but it’s what’s lurking under the shaker that’s really eye-popping. A Chevrolet Performance Parts LS7 crate engine was force-fed a bunch of intercooled air by a pair of Turbonetics turbos to bring the power up to almost 800 at the wheels. That’s the daily driver friendly tune—it can do more.

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McQ created quite a buzz at the 2011 SEMA show where it debuted, not just because of the color, but because all of the modifications were integrated so subtly that McQ strikes that perfect balance between restoration and custom. It’s impossible to not like this car.

Out at the MCOTY competition, McQ ran away from the pack in a hurry on the dragstrip, posting a best e.t. of 11.5 despite being severely traction limited. Set on kill with drag radials, it should be deep in the 10s. The story was the same with the speed/stop, where it posted a best of 9.179.

As for the real McQ Trans Am, one was obviously destroyed in filming, but we’ve heard that the second car used was later sold cheaply. Unfortunately, as the interweb rumor goes, it was destroyed while the owner was trying to evade the police. Kind of ironic, considering its past.

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“For Kevin King of YearOne, it was John Wayne in a dramatic car chase in a ’73 Super Duty Trans Am that really stuck with him.”

Out of the blue one day back in 2007, Jim and Mike Ring got a call from Gary Bauers. He’d just bought an ’07 Shelby Mustang and loved the car, but wanted it to be nicer. He had run across the images of the Ringbrothers past projects online and wanted to ship the Shelby directly to them from the dealership. Jim and Mike agreed, and they transformed the Shelby into a more upscale version of itself.

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Gary was exceptionally pleased with the results and enjoyed the car for a few years before he decided he wanted something more evil and more exclusive. Jim and Mike pitched him a concept they’d been rolling around for a while: they’d always thought the early Mustangs looked a bit too thin, so why not widen the whole car by a few inches? Gary loved the idea and told them to go for it. Problem was, Jim and Mike weren’t quite sure exactly how to do it yet.

Originally, the plan was to slice the fastback straight down the middle and add inches to the whole car. But after considering the logistics of doing so, especially keeping the shape and proportions of the roof line correct (not to mention the custom glass needed), the idea was scrapped.

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They next duct-taped extra quarters, fenders, and doorskins onto the car, but shifted 2 inches outward, and spray bombed the whole thing black to get a visual estimate. The effect was perfect, so much so that Jim doesn’t think there will ever be another early Mustang built by Ringbrothers that isn’t widened. By the way, if you want your own, the doors, quarters, fenders, end caps, headlight buckets, front and rear fascia, hood, and trunk lid will all be available in carbon fiber and fiberglass. All you need is a rusty fastback.

After snatching up the Goodguys Street Machine of the Year award, Jim and Mike brought the “Producer” (named after Gary’s oil industry supply company) out to MCOTY, running and driving it with the intent to win. The Producer was exceptional on all fronts with only a severe traction issue on the dragstrip hurting their final score, but high trap speeds told the tale. It is hard to hook an ultralight carbon-fiber and fiberglass fastback with 740 hp on tap!

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“…they’d always thought the early Mustangs looked a bit too thin, so why not widen the whole car by a few inches?”

We tend to think of high-end, pro-level cars as things that require a full-on pro shop and a good deal of space and equipment to build. Once again, Bob Bertelsen makes us all look lazy. This ’71 Camaro, dubbed the Brute, is the second showstopper Bob has created out of his two-bay home garage. The first, a ’72 Trans Am known as Code Red, you saw here in PHR on the cover of our Dec. ’10 issue. That one is still in use, but Bob had more ideas he wanted explore. For the Brute, he wanted a similar ethos as Code Red: civil, comfortable subtle custom touches, and modern handling ability, but he wanted to dial everything else up a notch. We’d say it actually ended up being a few notches, as it barely missed being a finalist for the Goodguys Street Machine of the Year. Though he didn’t take that award, Bob did capture the Goodguys Muscle Machine of the Year award. Shortly thereafter, he also received the Renegade award at the Motorstate Challenge. And this is only the fourth car he’s ever built.

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So how does Bob make it happen in a home garage? He believes in the theory that if someone else can do it so can he. Plus, he’s not afraid to ask questions and get advice from experienced builders like the Ringbrothers, DSE’s Kyle Tucker, Mark Stielow, and Brian Finch—all of whom Bob says have been very helpful and who are always willing to answer questions.

At the MCOTY competition, Bob was obviously enjoying himself and quickly used up all 10 of his possible runs on the dragstrip. The Brute did well, until the autocross course, where Bob said it felt rough and down on power. It wasn’t until later he discovered that a shredded belt had knocked loose one of the coil packs; he was running on seven cylinders. Once fixed, Bob drove the Brute three hours home since he’d loaned fellow competitor Ken Edwards his trailer after his engine failed.

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Since he’s sure the car is faster than his driving skills currently allow, Bob plans to run a lot of SCCA events, as well as Run Through the Hills, LS Fest, and hopefully the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational. You will see this car a lot in the coming year!

“So how does Bob make it happen in a home garage? He believes in the theory that if someone else can do it so can he.”

It’s not hard to look at a car built to the extremely high level of show car execution and detail that Johnson’s Hot Rod Shop (JHRS) turns out. Alan Johnson is famous for making the undercarriage as perfect as the top—which is the way it should be when the car is a potential contender for Goodguys’ Street Machine of the Year award. So surely it couldn’t perform as good as it looks, right? After all, it’s an unwritten rule that you have to sacrifice some things in the name of style. Apparently Alan Johnson never got that memo. This gorgeous little Chevy II does everything well, especially cone carving. What’s the secret? Historically Chevy IIs never posted great numbers in the handling department since they had very limited upgrades available, but DSE’s recently released front subframe and suspension and QuadraLink rear suspension changed all of that in a hurry. So not only could Johnson give this Chevy II that oh-so-low, nicely raked Alabama slamma stance that’s a signature of his cars, but he didn’t have to give up one bit of handling potential along the way.

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We caught a sneak peak at the car’s potential on the Goodguys Columbus autocross, but we got the full picture on our high-speed SCCA-designed course at the MCOTY competition. The Chevy II was impressively easy to throw around and garnered a Third Place finish just behind DSE’s ’65 Mustang and Kevin Miller’s ’69 Camaro. Considering that both of those cars are purpose-built track cars with nowhere near the same show-winning detail, the JHRS Nova was arguably the most outstanding vehicle in attendance. Quite a few competitors were surprised to say the least.

The Chevy II had traction issues off the line on the dragstrip, which kept the e.t.’s a bit higher in the quarter-mile than they should have been, but the JHRS Nova made up for it in the speed/stop challenge. All averaged out, the Chevy II just barely missed a podium finish, earning Fourth overall. That’s still impressive, considering the decidedly aggressive competition.

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“…it’s an unwritten rule that you have to sacrifice some things in the name of style. Apparently Alan Johnson never got that memo.”

John Cunningham is another guy who can trace his TA devotion back to that infamous green car in McQ; ever since he saw that movie at a drive-in with his dad back in 1974, he’s been a second-gen F-body fanatic. And we do mean fanatic; John typically has a dozen in various states of project form around at any given time. He actually passed by this particular ’73 TA for roughly three years before finally stopping to check on it. Once he did, there was something about the Buccaneer Red, 74K original-mile, 455ci, four-speed, A/C package that spoke to him. This was a good car.

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Four-speed cars are pretty rare, so at first John just wanted to restore it to stock and drive it. Then he decided to swap in a five-speed so he could run the Power Tour easier. Well, maybe a more modern engine too. And with that, the focus flipped 180 degrees into building a perfected version of the original car. Spurred on by his buddy Kevin King of YearOne, who had just bought his own ’73 to build the McQ car, parts started to arrive in droves.

All that changing direction stretched the time line out a few years, but with the help of the YearOne/Ghostworks crew, John’s TA was ready to roll with DSE suspension, a six-speed, and an Edelbrock-supercharged LS7 underhood. Of course, as a TA aficionado, John couldn’t ruin a rare car. He saved every original nut, bolt, and part, and no permanent changes were made—just in case he wanted it back to original. We don’t see that happening.

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The finished car is just too nice and performs amazingly well while being absolutely civil. At MCOTY, the TA performed without a hitch, which is good because when John says that it was built to drive, he means it. After running hard at MCOTY, he and King hopped in their respective TAs and drove through the mountains in Virginia and West Virginia, then down through the Carolinas to YearOne headquarters in Braselton, Gerogia. John then drove another 500 miles back to his place in Kentucky. Now that’s a street car!

“…as a TA aficionado, John couldn’t ruin a rare car; he saved every original nut, bolt, and part, and no permanent changes were made…”

We couldn’t wait to see Jon Clark and Flat Bastard run the events at MCOTY; one, because it’s a badass offbeat car (and you know how we love those); two, because we already ran the story on it in our Oct. ’12 issue; and three, because we happen to have a ’68 Valiant of our own in the fleet. We’re not saying we invited Jon simply for the chance to go over Flat B with a fine-tooth comb in person for ideas, but we’re not saying that had nothing to do with it either!

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Flat B was supposed to be a simple project for a simple car. Jon wanted to stay away from fabrication or high-end work and keep it like a garage-built car by using the best bolt-in suspension and parts available on a very pedestrian and affordable car.

True to plan, Flat B is mostly an everyday dude’s kind of car—except underhood. This is where things get a little hairy. Rather than a simple RB or Wedge, Jon went full kill and put together an aluminum World Products–based Wedge engine making a hair under 700 hp. But hey, it is a bolt-in!

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The plans for driving it everywhere didn’t change though, so in preparation for bad mileage on long trips like Power Tour, a gigantic 32-gallon fuel cell was built. Of course at 6.2 pounds per gallon, a full 198-pound tank might help weight transfer off the line!

It had teething problems, but Flat B made it all the way through MCOTY until the very last run in the autocross, where electrical gremlins and issues with the throttle body hanging open caused Jon to DNF. Besides that, the only issue we saw was Flat B blow the tires off at the drop of a hat, requiring cautious throttling on the course. Jon’s Valiant—our only Mopar—had some tantalizingly brilliant moments. It posted—by a good margin—the shortest speed/stop time of any car (8.977 seconds), and had the second fastest trap speed (124.58 mph) of all the cars in the drag race. If the motor hadn’t quit before the final autocross lap, who knows how the tables would’ve turned.

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Jon wasn’t upset and loved the experience: “I’m pulling g’s on the learning curve. To be able to do it with heavyweights in the industry was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.” Next he’ll be headed to Run Through the Hills as well as other events to continue sorting out issues and finding out where refinement is needed.

“…Flat B is mostly an everyday dude’s kind of car—except underhood. This is where things get a little hairy.”

Kevin Miller’s ambitions for his ’69 Camaro project sound like so many others that we’ve heard: “I wanted to build a car that I could take to autocross and track events and be competitive, but I also wanted it to be a comfortable street car for local shows and cruise nights.” Who doesn’t want that, right? The difference here is that Kevin totally followed through on all fronts and built a car in his garage that works very well on all fronts and hits all the right style points as well. We liked it right away when we spotted him last year in Nashville, and at subsequent autocross events where we’ve crossed paths with Kevin and his Camaro.

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The Camaro didn’t start out anywhere near this nice though; Kevin bought it from his stepdad back in 2007 as a shell in need of everything. Over the next three years, Kevin scrimped and saved every penny he could, short of neglecting bills, and spent every free minute wrenching on it. It took an immense amount of hard work and dedication, which Kevin credits his stepdad, Scott Mack, for helping him maintain. Scott has built several cars over the years and was currently finishing up a Penske/Donahue Sonoco Trans-Am Camaro clone as Kevin was starting his ’69. Having been through all the frustrations himself, Scott knew how to help keep Kevin on track building his dream car.

The Camaro’s debut actually came about on the autocross course at Goodguys in Kansas where even out of the box with no tuning it worked surprisingly well. At MCOTY, Kevin was looking very competitive right from the beginning with consistent 12.8 quarter-mile runs all the way through. He looked good in the speed/stop on his first run with a 9.52 as well, but the clutch went away on the second run, causing Kevin to DNF in the speed/stop event. That wasn’t going to stop him from doing his very best on the autocross portion though. With a push start from a friend, and only having Second gear, Kevin relied on skill and ended up posting the second fastest scored average of the day in the autocross. If not for a bad clutch, he might have finished in the top three. We don’t have a trophy for it, but we’d like to officially give Kevin the “Spirit of MCOTY” award for staying in and giving it his all.

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“Kevin scrimped and saved every penny he could, short of neglecting bills, and spent every free minute wrenching on it.”

Since its not uncommon for invitees to an event like this to drop out for some reason, our plan was always to keep our eyes peeled for worthy competitors at Goodguys Columbus—and what better locale than the autocross track? Thats where we first laid eyes on a little red 66 Mustang that was laying down blistering times around the course. By the time the dust settled at Goodguys, this cool little pony was the second fastest car in attendance, irrespective of cost. We liked the vintage race style of the car immediately, especially the subtly flared fenders and quarters, but it was the overall simplicity of the car itself that really won us over. Like David fighting Goliath, Ken Edwards was running against highly dialed-in cars with advanced suspension and chassis components with a Mustang that would be legal for vintage road racing. That means it was essentially stock underneath, with just stiff coil and leaf springs, thicker sway bars, and the Shelby control arm relocation mod. And yet Ken made it deep into the PHR Street Machine autocross finals before losing by a couple tenths of a second to a seasoned driver with a very fast car with mega-buck parts.

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Was it all driver skill, or had Ken just nailed the right parts package? We didnt care; this thing kicked ass. Even better was the fact that Kens son was also competing alongside his dad with his 68 Camaro—both of which had been driven from Smithtown, New York, as part of a father/son muscle car road trip. We couldnt invent a better story than that. Invite offered.

At the MCOTY competition, Ken knew victory could be his, so he had his throttle foot set on kill right away in the days first event and turned out some impressively fast e.t.s in the quarter-mile. Unfortunately, running the engine near redline on the Goodguys autocross course followed by several flat-out runs on the dragstrip ended up being too much for the engine and Ken had to bow out with catastrophic failure. He did at least walk away with the second-fastest drag average of the day, losing out only to Kevin Kings twin-turbo TA.

So who on earth builds a high-end Vega with a pro builder like Woodys Hot Rodz? Well, the whole thing started with a 99-cent Hot Wheels car that Chris Sondles of WHR found one day. Chris dad had campaigned a Vega drag car years back, and his good friend Mike Coughlin of Jegs had as well. The little Hot Wheels car was yellow and black like the livery the Jegs race cars wear, so Chris sent it to Mike as a joke. Shortly after that, Mike gives Chris a call and said: "This thing is too cool; we need to build it."

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Chris assumed it was a joke at first, and replied that the hardest part would be finding the car. "Already found one," Mike said. Three days later, a 71 Vega showed up at WHR. Initially, the plan was just to drop a big honkin engine in it and go fast in a straight line, because, really, what else do you do with a Vega? But Mike already has drag cars and decided hed rather have something that he could have fun driving and get involved in autocross events with. Since nothing like that exists for Vegas, Chris worked with Art Morrison Enterprises to design one of their Max-G full chassis for it.

The build progressed fairly quickly, but in true last-minute-cram style, 21 days before our MCOTY competition it wasnt even painted yet. WHR made it happen, though, and the finished Jegs Vega (we call it the Jega. Dont you dare roll your eyes; you love that name) truly looks almost exactly like the Hot Wheels—right down to the paint scheme and five-spoke wheels.

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At MCOTY, the Jega looked like a major contender with a good chassis and plenty of power on tap, but some transmission issues took them out of the running almost right away. The Coughlins are very competitive, though, so next time the Jega resurfaces you can be assured itll be fully sorted and competitive. The plan is to spend some time on Goodguys autocrosses in preparation for a re-debut at the 2013 LS Fest.

"Initially, the plan was just to drop a big honkin engine in it and go fast in a straight line, because, really, what else do you do with a Vega?"

First things first: we know a C10 pickup is not a muscle car and violates the rules of entry to the MCOTY competition, but it has good reason for being there. Phil and Jeremy Gerber of The Roadster Shop were originally planning to attend with a 69 Camaro they completed for a customer and entered in the running for Street Machine of the Year (SMOTY) at the Goodguys Columbus show. The Camaro was a stunner and made it into the semifinal round of judging, but didnt progress into the finals. No big deal; Phil and Jeremy had run the autocross course as part of the SMOTY qualifications and were prepared to really showcase what a Fast Track chassis could do under a 69 Camaro.

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The owner of the car, unfortunately, got a case of cold feet when he realized how much more aggressive our MCOTY event was going to be and pulled the plug. Phil and Jeremy were bummed as they didnt have anything else to throw into the ring, except Phils daily driver, a 70 C10. Originally a very beat pickup that they got as a development mule for the Fast Track C10 chassis, the truck had recently undergone a factory-style restoration and came along to Columbus for promotion of the chassis.

After witnessing how quick the C10 had lapped the Goodguys course, we offered to let the boys bring it to the MCOTY competition as exhibition only, knowing that they would put on a good show. Phil and Jeremy jumped at the chance, since they were just ready to go thrash on the truck for fun and further R&D, and also because they knew they had a surprise in store for all the muscle cars in attendance.

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Call it big sticky tires, plenty of power, or just good driving and chassis tuning, but The Roadster Shop C10 proceeded to kick some serious sheetmetal in every event at MCOTY. As a matter of fact, if it had been running as a timed competitor, it wouldve taken First Place. In a truck. No kidding. Consider our minds blown.

"Call it big sticky tires, plenty of power, or just good driving and chassis tuning, but The Roadster Shop C10 proceeded to kick some serious sheetmetal